Unable to connect Tor Client to local unpublished middle relay

We’re experimenting with a local Tor middle relay to measure its energy consumption when a client connects. Our relay is not published in the Cached Consensus; we’d like to know if it’s still possible to connect a Tor Client to it (without modifying Tor’s source). Currently, the client never shows any connection output. Below I have pasted my torrc file for the middle relay.

Address 0.0.0.0

SocksPort 9050

ORPort 0.0.0.0:9002

Nickname MyMiddleRelay ContactInfo nagubandi456@gmail.com

RelayBandwidthRate 100 KB

RelayBandwidthBurst 200 KB

ExitRelay 0

PublishServerDescriptor 0

DataDirectory /var/lib/tor

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Tor relay with the above torrc.
2. Configure a Tor Client to connect directly to this relay (without cached consensus).
3. Start the Tor Client and observe the terminal, no output or connection attempts are shown.

Expected behavior
The Tor Client should attempt a handshake with the relay’s ORPort and log connection progress, even if the relay is unpublished.

Actual behavior
The Tor Client remains silent; no errors, warnings, or progress messages appear in its terminal.

Questions

1. Can a Tor Client connect to a relay that isn’t in the consensus?
2. If so, how should the client be configured (e.g. torrc options) to force it to use our unpublished middle relay?
3. Are there any additional logs or debug flags we should enable to diagnose the issue?

Thank you so much for any direction or pointers to relevant documentation!